Wednesday, July 19, 2017

The Sinister Idea called Public Choice Theory

From the Guardian's George Monbiot, this article explains the Big Idea of the Paul Ryan Republicans. An inhuman philosophy wrapped around contempt for human beings and a worship of property. The evil genius is a professor from George Mason University, James McGill Buchanan. The philosophy is called Public Choice Theory. The contradictions begin there, because the freedom of choice is taken away from the public and vested solely with men of great wealth. The Koch brothers were major funders of this sinister idea.

The only right recognized by the money men of the GOP and the New Right is the right to property.

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is not something they recognize.

The only legitimate rights are those associated with property, which means rights that only exist by depriving others of those rights.

A right is not real unless you take it from someone else. This is the rights movement shaped around the impulses of the people who cut you off in traffic. Its newest expression is the legislation we are seeing in various states not to raise minimum wages but lower them or eliminate them.

Rights not attached to property or wealth are contemptible. Rights attached to individuality or humanity or talent or work are beneath contempt, hence the sacred right to own people and abuse them like cattle.

"Buchanan was strongly influenced by both the neoliberalism [sic] of Hayek and von Mises, and the property supremacism of John C Calhoun, who argued in the first half of the 19th century that freedom consists of the absolute right to use your property (including your slaves) however you may wish; any institution that impinges on this right is an agent of oppression, exploiting men of property on behalf of the undeserving masses.

“[Professor James McGill Buchanan] brought these influences together to create what he called public choice theory. He argued that a society could not be considered free unless every citizen has the right to veto its decisions. What he meant by this was that no one should be taxed against their will. But the rich were being exploited by people who use their votes to demand money that others have earned, through involuntary taxes to support public spending and welfare. Allowing workers to form trade unions and imposing graduated income taxes were forms of “differential or discriminatory legislation” against the owners of capital."